


jonquil and marigold

by orphan_account



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:01:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25816990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: just some words i coughed up about them
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Kudos: 14





	1. orion

Orion still hung in the sky, in the same place it always was. 

The boy was in the theater, the same place he always is at this time of night. He found it therapeutic, to be in a place where no one could possibly hear him.

I simply stepped around him. He wasn't going anywhere for the night, but he wouldn’t let himself fall to slumber.

The theater was large, and had many rooms—emphasis goes on the “had”, for that building was long dead. Perhaps what’s within it can say the same.

This theater’s corridors in particular were liminal space, perfect for someone like him. Gone through and left behind. Used and thrown away. He wasn’t awfully fond of how the story had gone.

He lied down, his hands over his stomach like a corpse, and he saw a crow in the window.

No, it was but a trick of the light. He let a tear escape him.

It was a pathetic image. I suppose there was something behind it.

He usually wore contacts, but those had been left at home. His glasses had been placed delicately to the side of his head.

The scarf around his neck wasn’t there for the cold. It only made him feel more secure. It was as if the crow were really there.

The glove in his pocket wasn’t there for any good reason. He is simply, as the crow would put it, “a brainless sentimentalist”. No, he’d say something smarter. The crow’s voice escaped him.

His self-imposed loneliness—

no.

His fading memory—

that can’t be it.

The drowning cold—

oh, no.

Everything began to creep up his spine, and he sang to chase it out.

He was not the most polished, but he was...fairly talented. A voice like bells at the stroke of midnight, the loudest sound of all in the face of void.

Moonlight spilled over him, not unlike the rogue river of tears that choked his song.

Where…

where…

why had that boy gone...and when would he dare to come back?

No, even that is wishful thinking. He’s dead. He’s dead as a doornail, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Orion stared back at him, in pity or in wonder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen to skeleton orchestra and lilia


	2. silence

The silence dug into his skull. The dream was over.

Was any of his work truly worth anything? What might the end have looked like, if he had made one more wrong move?

Those questions were foolish and juvenile, and as such he had no time for them. A soundless wind brushed them away.

He lied still with the ocean as it quivered and lullabied, and another question floated by. 

Where had he gone?

He pretended it wasn’t a good question. He pretended to be strong enough not to be bothered.

He’d pretended all his life, but for whose sake?

Himself, obviously. He took no shame in his selfishness, his single-mindedness in his goal. His goal that he couldn’t even fulfill. Even in his last moments, the boy had to rely on another’s choice.

Having to rely on others is a filthy thing, to be avoided at all costs. Blood is to be on your hands and yours alone, correct?

But thinking yourself independent, when really you’re but a puppet for a greater force...childish follies could not be fully evaded even by himself.

Well, it was too late to complain. The now nameless, faceless “second Detective Prince” must rest like any other person.

A wind passed by, and it rang in his bones like no other sound.

No other sound, other than that boy’s voice.

That boy’s voice, telling him his life wasn’t trivial.

Who would pass judgement on him? Nobody could prove his crimes, his unspeakable crimes, so he figured…

No. This couldn’t be death. Right? He wanted at least some closure. He wanted closure through punishment for his deeds.

He needed closure with that boy.

But he knew better than anyone that people don’t always get what they need, and wishes don’t always come true.

The miasma grew deeper, louder, and somehow, something in him let him cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional memory by jin kinda slaps doe


	3. space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hrrrngh...idk what drove me to write this one but it sure wasn’t anything good!!!

The space between words can only get louder.

He lied on his bed, his left leg rocking about impatiently and his eyes glued open, not knowing what to say to the boy on the other end of the line.

“I’m sorry. Just—something’s got my tongue, and—“

“Goodbye.”

Beeeeep.

Why chase him down? He’s got his mind set. You’re but a brainless sentimentalist, after all. The silence after the call stretched thin and taut.

He exhaled, and felt something run down his face, as if trying to escape along with his breath.

The words he was looking for came.

“I don’t pity you. I just care, like anyone should,” he mumbled, the words jumbling as they were spoken.

No, that’s not right, either.

Mona was asleep already.

As he lied there, the passage of time only became more apparent; the number of hours until the cat woke up, the minutes until he himself would fall to slumber, the seconds until the detective, stubborn as ever, would fall through his hands for the second time. Each was decreasing at a rate he couldn’t take.

He couldn’t take the prospect of failing to protect Goro from this awful world, and for the second time, at that.

He cradled himself in his arms, and the words came again, louder now.

“I care, and it doesn’t matter to me if that’s a sin.”

He already knew the words. Getting them out was the problem. How could he speak anymore to someone who knew they were supposed to be dead? How could he speak to the ghost he brought about?

He closed his eyes, but no rest was upon him.

He could only find images of what could have been.

Kisses under the open night sky, slow dances to classic jazz, even just a black coffee between two.

Nothing, nothing, nothing but the space between sentiment and reality.

Only in a few days would he finally have to face the music and let go.

He thought about how he had still kept the glove, because he has a habit of never letting go.

A balloon will fly away if you let it go. 

It’ll go far, far away where nothing can help it if it happens to deflate. Far, far away where nothing can restrain it.

Balloons aren’t humans.

Goro is only a human at the end of the day. A human who refuses to see the value of his own life.

Are you what you believe yourself to be, the image that only you see, or are you what other people think you are? If someone believes themself worthless, but someone else sees value in them, who’s to say that they have worth?

Loving a self diagnosed lost cause could never be easy.

He could make it easy, he thought, and cursed himself for ever considering it.

He deserves to be selfish, just this once, right?

Of course not. He’s already been selfish, to fall in love with a man as angry as Goro Akechi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hell itself consumes my very being


	4. hell

The first time they met was behind a million masks, each in their own Hell.

The image of a picture-perfect prince was plastic to begin with, but meeting him in person was nowhere near as cloying. When they actually started bonding, however, things took a turn that Akira only barely expected.

With its simultaneous homey charm and high class flair, the jazz club wasn’t exactly what one thought of when the detective came to mind, but it certainly wasn’t surprising to learn that it was his favorite place. It was in this air that Akira frequently lost himself in, washed over by waves of daydreams, supplemented by the performance in the background, hardly grounding him to reality.

He’d dream of a world where he and the boy beside him could be more than...what they were. It was hard to pin down their relationship; they were, after all, two wild cards, in too many ways to count.

They were two Persona users, two abuse victims, two teenage boys who needed a goddamn nap.

Akira justified his lack of sleep with how much the others would lose, and Goro with how much work could be done. Two sides, same miserable coin.

It was far too late that Akira learned of the other’s intentions, too late to pull him away.

When he was told Goro hated him, he found it remarkably hard to believe that this boy, who knew only lies and hate, truly meant it.

He dreamed of a world where nothing could separate them, least of all greedy politicians and malign gods. Where they could finally put what they had into words.

Yes, and obviously they’d never encounter another difficulty in their shameless lies. 

It was a selfish little dream, and he clung to it harder than ever before everything fell down so swiftly.

The second time they met, they were against each other, like they always are.

To find someone so close to you suddenly become an enemy is a shocking occurrence for anyone, but this particular betrayal wasn’t exactly surprising. That does not, by any means, indicate that it had less impact.

The third time they met, they made their promise a blood oath.

They faced off against each other again, soon after. By all means neither should have been standing where they stood, or feeling how they felt, or even…

Beyond all the what ifs, a door was shut with the sound of a bullet.

If you were to ask Akira what he felt in that moment, he would come up with some lame excuse to keep it hidden, because nothing could properly capture the lacuna which that moment left.

Grief couldn’t quite get to the core of it.

The fourth time they met, it was under what one could construe as even worse circumstances.

Greedy politicians, malign gods, and overzealous councillors who truly believed themselves in the right. The three banes of his existence.

It was lucky that the one who had died for Akira was Goro.

The detective had spent his life as a puppet. Who gave Akira the gall, the right to decide Goro’s fate, even if it was to spare him from death?

“What makes you think that you can string me along for something as selfish as that!?”

“I care about you, Goro. And I’ll always care.”

His scrambled feelings, unlike everything else about him, weren’t as mysterious anymore.

Something like shock overtook Goro’s face for a brief moment, and it was the second longest moment of Akira’s life.

What he wanted to say but didn’t let himself get away with was, “I love you, and I don't want to let you go.”

But love isn’t about clinging on until the bitter end. It’s about letting go. If you love someone, say, some bitter young hitman who can’t love himself, you should set them free, right?

So he untethered the dream, and Goro with it.

But he would always have his memory with him, lighting the path forward.

The fifth time they met was quite an anomalous one.

One of them, the detective, was making a return, and the other, the thief, a departure.

The longest moment in both of their lives, of course, was the second on March 19th in which their eyes met.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow that was one beeg boi for my standards. i hope you enjoyed it


End file.
